ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part discusses a series of estimates based on mortality. After a review of the biases that affect human judgment, it describes a series of experiments designed to define the cognitive processes that underlie lay judgments of hazards. The part provides a number of conceptual approaches for grouping and classifying hazards, and offers interesting possibilities for improving hazard management. The safety of another sweetener would then be compared with that of sucrose, at doses also including maximum conditions of exposure under intended human use. Subjects were asked to evaluate activities and technologies according to such qualities as newness, delay of consequences, voluntariness, or degree of knowledge. Taken together, the data show that lay subjects possess a rich, qualitative understanding of hazards which is reproducible and self-consistent over a range of selected populations.
